Chaptre 6
The closing ceremony at the 1991 Second Conference on Problem of Space and Time in Natural Science held in St. Petersburg Russia. With regard to the people mentioned in this book: row 1 number 1 Bryan Wallace, n. 2 Lee Coe, n. 3 Pavel Parshin; r. 2 n. 1 Leonid Maiboroda; r. 3 n. 5 Petr Beckman; r. 4 n.11 Svetlana Tolchelnikova; r. 5 n. 5 Vladimir Sekerin, n. 8 Alexandra Schpitalnaya; r. 6 n. 4 V. O. Beklyamishev; r. 7 n. 4 Konstantin Manuilov.
There is an interesting article [80] titled SOVIET SCIENTISTS TELL IT LIKE IT IS, URGING REFORMS OF RESEARCH INSTITUTES, that starts as follows:
A specter is haunting the Soviet Union the modernization of virtually every part of Soviet society. The Russian catchword for this is perestroika, which translates as "restructuring" or "reform." The concept has been described in recent books and statements by General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev and by his favorite economist, Abel G. Aganbegyan, who is director of the economics section of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Its implications for science and technology in the Soviet Union, observes Loren Graham, a longtime MIT history of science professor, "are as sweeping as anything undertaken by Peter the Great or Lenin. Like those historic figures, Gorbachev hungers to improve the country's science and technology. All of them realized that if significant advances weren't made, the country would be left permanently behind."Gorbachev's program, which combines perestroika with glasnost, or "openness," already has gone further than the revisions another Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, tried to introduce 30 years ago.
on page 98 we find the statement:
Accordingly, say US observers of Soviet science such as MIT's Graham, the obvious aim of perestroika is to remove the heavy hand of the bureaucratic old guard, to "democratize" the scientific establishment and to restructure basic research by strengthening a diversity of disciplines and making these more relevant to industry. This is also the message delivered in Sagdeev's essay in the current Issues in Science and Technology, a quarterly journal published by the US National Academies of Sciences and of Engineering. In it, Sagdeev calls for breaking up many of the research institutes that he labels "bureaucratic dinosaurs" into smaller, more flexible and more responsive operations, declassifying much of the research that the Kremlin still considers militarily significant and relaxing restrictions on international scientific cooperation.
and on page 99 the article closes with the following paragraph:
Indeed, says another Carnegie Endowment senior analyst, Andrew Nagorski, Soviet science is compartmentalized, "so that military applications get first call and the civilian economy is left to rot. The Soviet Union is a military superpower, but not an economic superpower." It is somewhat ironic, he observes, that in order to save his science establishment, Gorbachev must first buck it.
In October of 1987, I received a registered letter from a Dr. Vladimir Ilich Sekerin of the Russian science city of Novosibirsk. The translation of the letter by Drs. William & Vivian Parsons of Eckerd College states that he knew several of my works, including the work on the radar location of Venus. Just as I did, he also computed that the speed of light in a vacuum from a moving source is equal to c+v, and he included a copy of his article "Gnosiological Peculiarities in the Interpretation of Observations (For example the Observation of Double Stars)", in which is cited still one more demonstration of this proposition.
In July of 1988, I received a letter, written in English, from a Dr. Svetlana Tolchelnikova-Murri of Pulkovo Observatory. In the letter she said that she got a copy of my paper "Radar Testing of Relative Velocity of Light in Space" from Dr. Vladimir Sekerin in Novosibirsk. It was very interesting to her. She was working with Pulkovo Observatory, and her field was astrometry. She felt that the intrusion of relativistic theories into fundamental astrometry was quite a failure, that was not yet comprehended by the majority. Thanks to PERESTROIKA she was writing me openly, but their (Pulkovo) Observatory is one of the outposts of orthodox relativity. Two scientists were dismissed because they discovered some facts which contradicted Einstein. It is not only dangerous to speak against Einstein, but which is worse it is impossible to publish anything which might be considered as contradiction to his theory. It seems the same situation is true for their Academy. In February 1989 in Leningrad, they planned to organize a conference (during two days) "The Problem of Space and Time in Modern Science." Its real goal was hidden under the philosophical covering. Their only desire was to publish the results. There were only 6 reports in a schedule, but the lectors were of a middle (or low) scientific grade (rank) and now two official participants philosophers were added by the directors of their institutes. It was out of her power to invite me, but she could send me afterwards the copies of the reports in Russian if I was interested. She asked if I had ever been to Leningrad? If not she thought I should come. Her friends and her were very interested in my work after 1969. Under a separate cover she was sending me a book with several papers which might be interesting to me. In my reply to Svetlana, I sent her reprints of all the material I had published over the years. Since her original letter, I've had an extensive correspondence with Svetlana, and in a November 1988 letter she wrote that on the 13th of March 1989 during three days there would be a conference in Leningrad "The Problem of Space and Time in Natural Science" with participants from other cities of the USSR, and it would be alright for me or any of my friends from the USA to come to this conference. They hoped to invite TV and a journalist in order to raise the question of scientific ethics in their scientific community. The best guarantee that their scientific papers will be published not in ten or thirty years, but now, will be the presence of some objective observers or participants from my country at the conference, and it would be easier for them not to use Aesopian language.
In an effort to comply with Svetlana's request to bring western scientists and journalists to the conference, I used my personal copy machine, computer, and daisy wheel printer to send a 4 page personal letter to 23 journalists and 43 scientists, along with a copy of her letter that contained the conference invitation and information. The following is a sampling of some of the replies: Paul C. Tash, the Metropolitan Editor of the local newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times wrote that unfortunately, circumstances did not permit them to accept our offer. However, if there should be developments at the conference that I considered newsworthy, please contact their reporter David Ballingrud, who covers science and aerospace; Walter Sullivan of The New York Times, whom I mentioned earlier in Chapter 4, wrote that he had not been to Pulkovo for many years and would love to return, but is retired now and could not justify the trip; Dr. David Lazarus, the Editor-in-Chief of The American Physical Society wrote he was sorry not to be able to accept our invitation to attend your upcoming meeting in the USSR. It might be enjoyable as well as enlightening. In his role as Editor-in-Chief, however, he must constrain himself to a totally hands-off or arm's-length posture regarding any field of research; Dr. Jean Pierre Vigier of the Institut Henri Poincaré in France, wrote that in his present situation it is absolutely impossible for him to attend the Pulkovo Conference unless he received an official invitation, which is also necessary to obtain a Soviet visa and raise the travel expenses. He has always had his doubts on Prof. Shapiro's observations and would appreciate a discussion on the radar experiments. The Sekerin results were unknown to the experts in Paris and he hoped I can inform them after my trip to Leningrad. If I or some soviet observer has new significant results on our problem he would be happy to consider them for publication in Physics Letters A of which he was an Editor; Dr. Louis Essen of England, whom I mentioned in Chapter 2, wrote that it would have been interesting to attend the meeting at Pulkova Observatory - which he visited a long time ago, but health problems prevent him from travelling - quite apart from the expense. He hoped that Svetlana and I did not expect too much from the meeting. Many criticisms of relativity theory have been published without having any effect on the Establishment, showing that publication is not enough. Indeed the more the theory is criticized the more strident the support is maintained - a common feature of all irrational beliefs. He had heard a former Director from there give a paper in which he showed that a careful analyses of the 1915 eclipse results did not support Eddington's claim, on the Relativity Theory.
In her letter of 2/12/89 Svetlana wrote that if 1/5 of the people I had invited will come it would cost her head. During my visit I learned that the Observatory had received a large number of letters from western scientists, that expressed dismay over the fact that such a conference was being held. I now know that the ease of which I obtained my Visa was the exception and not the rule. It seems that my visit was sponsored by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and since it was an unusual Visa, no one at the Observatory knew how to handle it, in particular, Svetlana could not determine where or if I needed to register my arrival at my destination. The only one I found to accompany me to the conference was Robert Fritzius of the Magnolia Scientific Research Group at Starkville Mississippi. Even though Svetlana sent him a personal invitation to the conference, and told him he could stay at the guest quarters at the Observatory, he was forced to get his Visa thru Intourist which cost him an extra $200, and he had to stay at the Moscow Hotel in Leningrad which cost an additional $1000.
Robert kept an extensive log that contained intimate details of the trip, and he sent me a copy of it. He intended to use the log to help him translate the papers and other information that came from the conference. He translated the original c+v double star paper Vladimir Sekerin sent me in 1987, and has now also finished the translation of Vladimir's book. I found from his log, that with regard to his Visa, he was registered automatically when he arrived at the hotel, and that the Intourist person kept his passport and Visa for the first night. He had to obtain his room key from a lady in charge of his floor to enter his room, and he had to return the key to her when he left his room. In contrast to Robert, I stayed in Svetlana's daughter's room in her flat at the Observatory. Her daughter was 14 years old and her name was Katja, and she had pictures of Western and Eastern rock music stars on the walls.
I brought my 35mm SLR Pentax camera with me along with 3 rolls of 36 exposure Kodak Ektachrome 400 slide film, so I now have 108 very nice slides of the tours thru the Hermitage museum, St.Isaac's Cathedral, a famous cemetery, all the speakers at the conference, radio and optical telescopes and related equipment at the Observatory, meals and meetings at different homes, etc. During my visit I had many intimate conversations with regard to just about any subject of interest from politics to science, and in several conversations with people who seemed to have intimate knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes, I learned that my correspondence with Svetlana was being monitored and that Gorbachev had read Vladimir's book STUDIES INTO THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY, and it was his references to my published papers that had lead to my unusual Visa. I told Svetlana that I believed that we were pawns in a larger game that concerned Gorbachev's interest in stopping "Star Wars" and the nuclear arms race, and that revealing intimate knowledge of the c+v relative velocity of light in space and military secrecy with this regard, were all elements of this game. Svetlana was unhappy at the prospect of being a pawn, and would have preferred to have the illusion of freedom, but I on the other hand, am happy to be a pawn, just as long as the game moves in the direction I wish it to go.
The fact that our correspondence had been monitored was obvious. I have observed the wrinkled appearance of the sealed parts of the envelopes, the gloss of the resealing glue, as well as the erratic arrival times of our air mail letters. The surveillance of our mail had caused a major communication problem, for instance Robert called the Director Dr. Victor Abalakin, and was told there was no March conference at the Observatory. Since I had not heard from Svetlana for some time, I called Abalakin and he said the same thing, but added the suggestion that perhaps it was being sponsored by some other scientific society in Leningrad. Abalakin said he would have someone meet me at the airport, and asked if I would contact Dr. J. Lieske at the Jet Propulsion Lab for him. I managed to contact Lieske at a different number than the one Abalakin had given me, and he was surprised to find it was a simple matter to call the USSR, he thought that you had to obtain permission from the KGB. The main problem with calling the USSR is the fact that the lines tend to be very busy, the best time I had found to place a call turned out to be around 5:30 AM, and I suggested to Lieske, that because of the larger time difference in California, the best time for him would probably be around 1:00 AM.
On 2/1/89 I received 3 letters from Svetlana dated from 11/17/88 to 1/15/89, which tends to illustrate the erratic nature of our airmail correspondence. One letter contained a New Years card that had about 20 signatures of people from around 5 different scientific organizations in Leningrad, another letter contained 3 postcards, with one card showing the building where the conference was to take place, the Leningrad Academy of Sciences which was built in 1873, on the card Svetlana said that they hoped to organize two lectures for me to deliver, one at the Academy of Civil Aviation, and the other at the Institute of the History of Science. On 2/14/89 I wrote Svetlana of my change in travel plans, I was to arrive on an Air France flight from Paris at 3:45 PM instead of the Aeroflot flight from Moscow at 4:20 PM. She did not received that letter by the time I arrived on March 10, and she was waiting at the wrong building. Prof. Pavel F. Parshin, the Chief of the Department of Physics at the Aeroflot Academy of Civil Aviation, showed up looking for Robert, and found me instead. Both Robert and I had arrived on the same plane, and Intourist had already taken him to his hotel. Svetlana turned out to be a pleasant looking 52 year old woman with light red hair, and she greeted me as her soulmate from the USA. We drove to her flat at the Observatory, and had a very elaborate dinner, that was prepared by two of Svetlana's male associates, and included champagne to celebrate my arrival. One of the men fixing the dinner was Dr. Konstantin Manuilov, and he gave a talk at the conference that was based on his solution to the n-body problem based on Newtonian mechanics. We were quickly on a first name basis, and because of my poor memory, many of the names, conversations, and events that took place during the visit were a blur.
The next day, which was a Saturday, Robert and myself along with Vladimir Sekerin and his wife Lydia went to visit Pavel and his wife and son in their apartment in Leningrad. Robert had a number of questions concerning his effort to translate Vladimir's book, then we had in depth discussions about Pavel's work concerning a modern variation of the Ive's experiment, it seems that while he was able to publish the details of the experiment and the resultant data in a prominent USSR scientific journal, he was not able to publish his theoretical analysis because it was not consistent with Einstein's special relativity theory. We had a very elaborate dinner followed by cognac and more discussions.
The following day, which was a Sunday, Svetlana and Katja, took Robert, Vladimir, Lydia, and myself on a tour of Leningrad. We visited a cemetery across the street from the hotel where many prominent people were buried, than a Russian Orthodox church service where Svetlana, Katja, and I lit candles, then we went to the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage was a fabulous place with over a thousand rooms, it would have taken days to visit all of them, one of the pictures taken was of me standing next to a portrait of my ancestor Oliver Cromwell. After that we had coffee and filled pastry at a Russian version of a fast food restaurant, and then paid a visit to the Victory Square War Memorial and Museum dedicated to the World War II 900 day siege of Leningrad. That night Svetlana, Katja, Robert, and myself had dinner at an apartment built during the Khrushchev era which was the home of one of Svetlana's younger friends, a woman whose husband was a geophysicist working with marine gravity measurements, and who had a daughter the same age as Katja.
The next day was a Monday, and Svetlana took me to pay an official visit to the Observatory's front office. The only problem was that all the top officials had flown to Moscow, and there was no one in charge of the Observatory??? Svetlana arranged to have an Observatory van and driver for us to use, and then we made a trip to Leningrad to pickup a young woman physicist named Olga who was to serve as an interpreter for my lecture that afternoon. She was given a copy of my famous 1969 "RADAR TESTING OF THE RELATIVE VELOCITY OF LIGHT IN SPACE" paper to familiarize her with the terms I would use in the lecture, and as we drove along, she was reading the paper and said "this is madness I can't be reading this, I must be going mad." That morning we visited St.Isaac's Cathedral, an unbelievable place, then we paid a visit to a respected elder scientist, Dr. S. A. Bazilevsky, who had been unable to publish anti-relativity papers during his career. He knew of my 1969 paper and wanted to meet me, and during our meeting he handed me a carbon copy of one of his unpublished papers. One of Svetlana's friends read a paper of his during the conference, and my 1969 paper was referenced and it caused quite a stir. After the visit, we went to the House of Scientists, a large palace that was still in the process of restoration, and I delivered my lecture which dealt for the most part, with the philosophy and history behind Einstein's relativity theories. The lecture was well received, with many comments and questions, and afterwards we went into another room and attended a banquet in which Robert and I were the guests of honor. The banquet ended with two bottles of cognac, and many toasts, it was a wonderful experience.
The next day was Tuesday March 14, the 110th. anniversary of Einstein's birth, and the new starting date of the conference, which was now being held in a lecture hall at Pulkovo Observatory. At the entrance to the hall, Svetlana had set up a poster display containing a drawing of a dragon and the earth, and a number of humorous satirical poems and arguments, and beneath the poster she put a copy of the article "RELATIVITY - joke or swindle?" which was published by the prominent English physicist Dr. Louis Essen. [70] The Director of the Observatory flew in from Moscow to deliver the opening address, and then flew back to Moscow. Svetlana introduced me to the Director before the conference started, and he laughed when I told him what Lieske had said about the KGB. Abalakin said that shortly after my call to Lieske, Lieske had called him. Svetlana was surprised by the objective tone of Abalakin's speech. Before he had become the Director, he had been an anti-relativist, then after he obtained the position, he switched camps and became a relativist, and even won a state prize for introducing relativity into celestial mechanics. Also under his administration, two of the other woman anti-relativists had been forced into early retirement, and now it seems that position has been reversed, and they are back at work.
A humorous twist to the conference was the fact that some of the relativists at the conference complained that they were being persecuted. A number of relativists withdrew their papers, and that changed the length of the conference from 3 to 2 days. Because of the many changes that had taken place, the printed program was no longer valid, and due to the lack of a copy machine at the Observatory, I was unable to match speakers and papers with my slides, but Svetlana later sent me an updated program so I could do so. During the afternoon session, Svetlana delivered her talk concerning her anti-relativistic views with regard to positional astronomy. Svetlana's talk was followed by Vladimir's talk presenting the binary star evidence showing the speed of light in space was c+v. That night there was a meeting of the conference committee. It was decided that Robert and myself would become members of the committee and that there would be another conference to be held in Leningrad two years later. I suggested, and it was accepted that Dr. H. Aspden of England, Dr. J. P. Vigier of France, and Dr. J. P. Wesley of West Germany be invited to become members of the committee. I told the committee that Vigier was a member of the Institute Henri Poincaré in Paris and an editor of Physics Letters A. I also said that in his reply to my letter in regard to the conference, he had expressed an interest in the results from the conference, and suggested that participants submit papers to him for possible publication in his journal. Svetlana announced that V. N. Bezwerchy had contacted her and offered to publish the proceedings of the conference. I had talked with Bezwerchy a number of times during my visit, he was an interesting fellow and he seemed to have a great deal of inside information with regard to political and scientific matters in the USSR. I suggested that we consider publishing the proceedings in English as well as Russian, and it was agreed to investigate that possibility.
The following day was Wednesday, and my talk was the last one of the morning session and Svetlana served as the translator. I used overhead projector slides for illustration and to help prompt me, since I did not have a prepared text, and the title of the talk was "The Problem of Space and Time in Modern Physics." Robert's log with his notes on the lecture allowed me to create a written version which was to be published in the conference proceedings. The talk was based on the arguments and information in my paper [71] "THE GREAT SPEED OF LIGHT IN SPACE COVERUP" and the followup paper [32] "SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM" which was in part a reply to I.Shapiro's reply [72] to the first paper. One of the many interesting comments and questions that followed the talk, was where a participant asked me to summarize my opinions with regard to relativity theory. I stated that the special relativity first postulate with regard to detection of translatory motion, was obviously false, and referenced Einstein's former research associate's argument in this regard. [73] I went on to state that any reasonably objective physicist should realize that the ultimate test of the second postulate that the speed of light in space is constant, is to analyze the modern data on the transit times of light signals in the solar system, and this evidence shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the postulate is also obviously false, and I cited my above arguments in this regard. I also mentioned that the prominent British astronomer Dr. G. C. McVittie in both publication and correspondence has indicated that he has had the same sort of problem in trying to obtain meaningful information from Shapiro, and in a 1970 letter writes that the secrecy with which Shapiro surrounds his methods and his observational results makes him wonder whether there is something to be concealed. In McVittie's paper, he points out the fact that:
in the Einsteinian theory of gravitation, an exact solution for the gravitational field of a set of discrete bodies is possible only when one of the bodies is of finite mass whereas the rest are of infinitesimally small mass. This is in contrast to the Newtonian theory of gravitation in which an exact solution for the field of two massive bodies is possible, complications arising only when three or more bodies are in question... [81]
The fact that Moyer's equation (3) is the "Newtonian" approximation to the n-body metric, should be considered as evidence against Einstein's general relativity equivalence principle. [36] On the other hand, Dr. J. C. Hafele and Dr. R. E. Keating have used commercial jet flights and atomic clocks to present convincing empirical evidence that tends to resolve the relativistic clock "paradox", and they found that the relativistic dilation of time was a function of the clock's speed relative to an absolute coordinate system at rest relative to the distant galaxies. [74] I certainly have no problem with E=mc^2 since the atomic bomb is ample evidence that it is true. So in general, much of relativity theory is true, but many of the original arguments are not. The real problem with modern science is the lack of scientific objectivity and integrity on the part of many prominent scientists, they are little more than politicians, and are far more concerned with the advancement of their careers and status, then the advancement of science. What is needed are true scientific journals that publish all arguments and evidence in a reasonable period of time and at a modest cost. The peer review should take place after publication, and should involve all scientists, and not just a privileged few. The key to the more rapid advancement of scientific knowledge, is a more efficient and democratic forum for communication.
On Thursday, the last day of my visit, I had a tape recorded interview by a newspaper correspondent from the Soviet science city of Tomsk. He was surprised to find that I considered the most important man alive today to be Gorbachev. I explained that his efforts to end the arms race would result in a much safer world, and would bring vast economic benefits to both the US and the USSR. Science would also benefit from the end of the arms race, since military secrets invariably involve scientific knowledge. A major element in the c+v speed of light in space coverup may have been the military interest in using the laser as a "Star Wars" weapon.
After the interview I asked Svetlana if I could take a picture of the large 26" refractor telescope. She explained that this was hard to do since the administration did not like to show off their equipment to visitors. She asked her friend Dr. Alexandra Schpitalnaya, one of the reinstated anti-relativitists, to try and show me the telescope while she fixed our final lunch. Alexandra took me to the building where the keys are kept, and the woman in charge of the keys refused to give them to her, then Alexandra made a phone call, and a short while latter a man ran down a large hallway, signed out the keys, and gave them to Alexandra. After a fast tour of the radio and optical telescopes, museum, and library, we returned to Svetlana's, and found that Katja and her friend Anna had baked me a cake with "For Your" written on top. At the airport Svetlana said we would say goodbye in the Russian way, so we hugged and kissed each other's cheeks. As the plane flew into the low lying clouds, my last view was of the large dome of the 26" telescope at the Pulkova Observatory, a fitting end to my wonderful visit to the USSR.
On my return to the US, the first thing I did was to use the copy of Roberts notes which he sent me, to generate a paper concerning my invited talk at the conference. Then I sent the paper to Svetlana, so that it could be published in the conference proceedings. The next thing I did was to use a slide copier to make prints from 36 of the slides, which I then sent to Svetlana and Robert. Then I wrote a long letter to Walter Sullivan concerning my visit to the USSR, and also sent copies of the letter to other people that I thought would find the trip to be of interest. One of the more interesting replies was from Dr. J. P. Wesley of West Germany, who wrote thanking me for the copy of my exciting saga to Leningrad letter that I wrote for Sullivan, he also enclosed a list of individuals who would be interested in space-time physics. With regard to Wesley's list, I received a 4 December 1989 letter from Prof. Jorge C. Cure' of Miami Florida inviting me to an informal gathering in St. Petersburg Florida on the 27th of December 1989, to put in practice the old Greek art of exchanging ideas in friendly dialogues. He wrote that due to a strange circumstance the state of Florida had attracted seven free thinkers, that dared to walk the lonely path of fundamental inquiries. It seems that Jorge had gotten the seven names from Paul's list! The Florida anti- relativist conference was held at Lewis House on the Eckerd College campus, and was sponsored by the Academy of Senior Professionals, of which one of the participants, Earl C. Sherry, was a member. The one day conference was video taped by one of the participants, Francisco Muller. My talk was the first one, and was illustrated with 80 35mm color slides. The first 40 slides were related to my work concerning radar testing of the relative velocity of light in space, [18] and research done at Eckerd College in collaboration with Prof. Wilbur F. Block and Prof. Richard A. Rhodes II on H- ions, [82] crossed beam electron- electron scattering at low energy, [83] and computer simulation of mass dynamics in electrons. [66] And the last 40 slides were from my USSR visit and the Pulkovo conference. The talk was well received, with many interesting questions and comments from the participants.
The 1989 anti-relativist conference at the Lewis House of the Academy of Senior Professionals on the Eckerd College campus. From left to right of the front row, F. Muller, B. Wallace, E. Sherry, W. Jones; rear row is , J. Claybourn, D. Berrman, J. Cure.
In a letter dated 6/4/89 Prof. Pavel Parshin informed me that a Dr. Fedor A. Morochov intended to publish a paper about my talk at the Pulkovo conference, and in a letter dated 12/14/89, he informed me of the increasingly large number of anti-relativistic works being published in the USSR, including a booklet titled "Miracles of the Relativistic theory" written by a Supreme Soviet deputy, Dr. A. A. Denisov from the Leningrad Politechnical Institute. Pavel also informed me of the special program "Mirror" of the Leningrad TV that had a show devoted to an "Is Einstein right?" discussion, and he suggested that I submit an entry to the program. I submitted a six page single spaced letter on this subject, and included copies of my Scientific Ethics articles on this question. [32,71] In a letter dated 3/25/90 Svetlana said that Parshin went to Minsk in early February 1990, where about 40-50 physicists had a five day anti- relativistic conference. In my reply to her of 4/9/90, I wrote:
I have not heard from Parshin about the February conference, but you know how unreliable the mail is, he may have written but I have yet to receive it. The anti-relativistic conference sounded exciting, 40-50 physicists, and lasting 5 days! Very good. It confirms my suspicion that the anti-relativity Renaissance will come from the USSR. I expect that the next 20 years will see a varietal explosion of science and technology coming from Russia. It would be wonderful if it would lead to PERESTROIKA and GLASNOST in science in the US and the rest of the world as well. As you say about the results from the conference, there are many different variations of anti- relativity theory in the US and other Western countries as well. The important thing, is not that there be a consensus of opinions, but that there be a free and democratic right to voice and publish opinions, the consensus will come in time. And it will be a realistic consensus, and not the unrealistic authoritarian consensus we now have with regard to Einstein's relativity theories. Since you now have N.2 of GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS you have that conference report. As I was writing this letter, the current copy of Physics Essays arrived, and the back of this letter contains a copy of that report, and I also enclose a spare copy for you to share.
The reports I referred to in the letter were ones that I had published on the 1989 Pulkovo conference. [83,84] I have received a large correspondence that includes many reprint request from the GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS article. [84] One of the letters came from the Editor of the journal APEIRON, who asked if I thought any of my contacts in Leningrad would like to see his journal and that contributions were welcome. In my letter to him I wrote that Svetlana is the ring leader of the Leningrad anti- relativists, and writes and speaks English fairly well, and that he should write her directly to find out if any of them would like to subscribe or publish in his journal. One of the more interesting replies came from Prof. Howard Hayden of the Department of Physics of the University of Connecticut. He started out by requesting a reprint of my 1969 Venus radar paper, and then wrote that he did not wish to count himself among the defenders of relativity theory, but he doubted whether the discovery that the speed of light isn't constant will revolutionize much physics. It may "devastate" a few people, but not the knowledgeable ones, on the other hand, getting a physicist to say that the speed of light isn't constant is like trying to exsanguinate a turnip. It is somewhat futile to argue with special relativity theory, primarily because it is inherently irrefutable. That is, it is supposed to work only in inertial frames, which are non-existent. With regard to General Relativity he closed with the hope that it will die a slow death at the hand of Ockham's razor. I received a 3/15/90 letter from the editor Prof. Petr Beckmann, who wrote that a Palo Alto physicist, Dr. Eugene Salamin, had sent a long letter arguing with the papers published so far in Galilean Electrodynamics. Concerning my report, Salamin's letter contains the following paragraph:
"The report on the Soviet Conference claims there is evidence from binary stars that the speed of light in space is c+v. This is totally absurd: after thousands of years travelling to earth, the light from the different members of the binary systems would get out of phase. If the c+v theory were true, some binary systems would exhibit simultaneous red shifts from both members, instead of one member red shifted and the other blue shifted."
I sent Beckmann the following 3/19/90 reply:
Eugene Salamin is correct in arguing "If the c+v theory were true, some binary systems would exhibit simultaneous red shift from both members, instead of one member red shifted and the other blue shifted." In a classic astronomy textbook[136] we find following ad hoc c argument to explain this observed phenomena:Struve concludes that the gas whirlpools cause the seeming discrepancy in the behavior of a few eclipsing binaries which long puzzled the investigators. Where the velocity curve of the binary implies an orbit of considerable eccentricity, the light curve may require a circular orbit.Fox has done an extensive investigation of the supposed evidence against the Ritz c+v emission theory[68] and with regard to binary stars argues:
There are also some difficulties for Struve's hypothesis. The model would seem to have consequences similar to those of the Ritz theory.The analysis of the transit times of light signals in the solar system does not suffer from the same ambiguity as that of the binary star data. With this regard I have recently published[67] the following argument:
Theodore D. Moyer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has published a paper that reports the methods used to obtain accurate values of range observables for radio and radar signals in the solar system. Moyer's (A6) equation and the accompanying information that calls for evaluating the position vectors at the signal reception time is nearly equivalent to the Galilean c+v equation (2) in my paper 'Radar testing of the relative velocity of light in space.' With regard to his equation, Moyer states "The first term on the right-hand side is the Newtonian light time" but he does not go on to explain the enormous implications of this statement. I sent Moyer a reprint of this paper, and to date, he has not seen fit to comment on my argument.
I received a 3/27/90 telephone call from Beckmann, and he asked many questions with regard to my views on this matter, then he stated that he may not have sufficient room in his journal for my reply. In his publication of Salamin's comments in the May/June 1990 issue, he dropped the above paragraph and did not publish my reply. I am not surprised that Beckmann did not accept my answer for publication since he now realizes that the modern solar system data presents evidence against his theory that light is a wave in the gravitational field.
I found my participation in the 1991 II International Conference on Space and Time Problems in Natural Sciences to be an exhilarating experience. The Conference was convened and organized by the Leningradian Branch of The Academy of Sciences of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which was created in April of 1991 by the Russian parliament. The Conference was held at the 15 story 746 room Leningrad Hotel on the bank of the Neva river, and the participants stayed and had meals there as well. From my hotel room window I could see the cruiser Aurora that fired the shot to signal workers and sailors to begin their February 1917 victorious assault on the Winter Palace. The Palace has become the Hermitage Museum with more than 3 million works of art, and it was also visible from my window, and was only a short walk from the hotel. The food, lodging, and Cultural programs were all covered by the $270 registration fee, with the only additional expense being the optional $50 cost of the Friday Conference Banquet. The Conference had a total of 114 participants, with 14 of them from countries outside the USSR. The Local Organizing Committee limited the number of Soviet participants to 100 in order to maintain a more desirable size for the Conference. The foreign participants received an English version of the program that contained abstracts of the papers to be presented, and the Soviets received a Russian version. The program underwent extensive revision, mainly due to the fact that around 26 of the expected foreigners did not show up, probably because of fear of what to expect from the recent Soviet coup attempt and the normal USSR communications problems. The participants received a radio receiver and ear phone that allowed them to receive both Russian and English simultaneous translations, and a staff of translators were available for translation of conversations between individuals and small groups and meetings. Most of the more important talks were held in the large Grand Hall, and the talks that the Local Organizing Committee decided were of lesser importance were held in the afternoon sessions in two smaller Halls. Much of the proceedings were televised, and some of the participants, including myself, received televised interviews.
The Conference opened at 9:00 AM on Monday September 16th, with a welcoming address by Prof. Leonid Maiboroda, the chairman of the Leningradian Branch of the Academy. There was a Reception at 6:00 PM that night, with plenty of fancy food and drink.
Lee Coe of California, delivered an excellent presentation of his paper GALILEAN-NEWTONIAN RELATIVITY VERSUS EINSTEINIAN RELATIVITY at 10:40 AM on the Tuesday Plenary Session in the Grand Hall. I was one of the chairmen for the session, and I could see from the podium that his talk had been televised. I told Lee, and he was able to obtain a VHS cassette copy for $50. I received a September 24th phone call from Lee, and he said that the tape did not play back at the proper speed on his daughter's VCR but that he would be able to have it transcribed to the proper US speed for a reasonable cost. The Tuesday Cultural program was an afternoon tour of the Hermitage Museum, but I did not go since I had been there on my last trip, and I had to spend most of my spare time meeting with groups and individuals. I kept the staff of translators busy, and gave most of them small print copies of a preprint of this book, to express my gratitude for their difficult task. I received a large collection of booklets, reprints, etc. from various individuals, and also gave them copies of my book in return, for a grand total of 52 book copies that I gave out during the trip.
Prof. Petr Beckmann, who I mentioned earlier, was the US co- chairman of the Conference Scientific Organizing Committee and one of the chairmen for the Wednesday Plenary Session, and he announced that unlike the previous sessions, he intended to rigidly follow the schedule. He said that each speaker would have 20 minutes to talk, even though the program listed 30 minute sections, and the previous talks had been 25 minutes to talk, and 5 minutes for questions and comments? Svetlana Tolchelnikova's paper titled VERIFICATION OF EINSTEIN'S SECOND POSTULATE BY MEANS OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS was the second one for the session, and she had been left a full blackboard from the previous speaker. As she was cleaning the board Beckmann announced that the time would be deducted from her talk. I mounted the platform and told Beckmann that I was donating the time for my talk to Svetlana. He announced this, and Svetlana and many other participants protested my decision, since they wished to hear what I had to say. I went to the floor microphone and stated that my talk was merely an abstract of my book THE FARCE OF PHYSICS, that I had plenty of condensed preprints for anyone that wanted them, and that Svetlana had shown me the material she would present and that in my opinion her talk would eventually be considered to be the most important event in science in the 20th century. Svetlana then had plenty of time to give her presentation that was essentially an indepth confirmation by a professional astronomer and mathematician of my 1969 paper on this question. Her evaluation of the published mathematics used by the professionals who had analyzed the modern solar system signal data, was that the classical theory was confirmed since the equations with the second order terms empirically found by investigators coincide with the classical formulae, and not the relativistic ones! Prof. Beckmann later made a translation of her talk from Russian to English, and published it in his journal GALILEAN ELECTRODYNAMICS. [151] The Cultural program that night was in the Grand Hall and consisted of singing, music, and Russian folk dancing.
I delivered Prof. John E. Chappell, Jr.'s paper THE PROBLEM OF INTOLERANCE IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES, AND THE PATH TO A NEW NATURAL PHILOSOPHY as the first paper to be delivered during the Thursday afternoon session in the Grand Hall. After the talk there was an extended applause, and when it stopped I said that since it was not my paper, I would not answer any questions, but that he had given me copies of the talk and other material to hand out to anyone who was interested. As soon as I reached my seat, I was surrounded by people that wanted his material, and I did not have enough for all of them. During the session there was a very impressive well illustrated talk by a high tech research type individual Dr. V. O. Beklyamishev, and the title of his paper was ON GNOSIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF WALLES'S INVESTIGATION OF THE DATA OF VENUS RADIOLOCATION. This version of the spelling of my name appeared a number of times during the Conference, and seems to be how it is translated from Russian back into English. From the way Beklyamishev spoke, I got the impression he was a member of a research group, and that he was talking about a continuing research project. In a photograph taken at the Conference, he was sitting with a group of people that included a man wearing a military uniform. Svetlana had told me that the space data was controlled by the military in the USSR. I have a sneaking suspicion that Beklyamishev's paper is the opening round in a dramatic Russian research project that will bring an end to the Einstein Relativity era of modern physics. That evening the Cultural program was a tour of churches and palaces and so forth, but I did not go because of a business meeting. The meeting was with a man from Moscow, Dr. Sergei Goncharov who was the General Director of "Intertechnopark" a Economic Scientific Research Institute. The meeting included a number of the foreign participants and involved tentative plans on the foundation of an international school of advanced physics, the organization of groups to run seminars of Soviet and foreign scholars, work on modern textbooks, and international commercialization of advanced technologies.
The Friday afternoon session in the Grand Hall was titled Problems of Scientific Ethics, and Dr. A. A. Denisov (President Gorbachev's advisor, and the head of Commission on Ethics problems of the Supreme Soviet) was the principle chairman. I was the first speaker and the essence of my talk was that the main problem was the lack of scientific ethics in modern scientific journalism. I proposed that the Russian Academy would start a new archival international scientific journal that would be devoted to democratic journalism free from arbitrary prejudicial and political censorship. The talk was well received and I was handed a number of notes from participants that wanted to help establish such a journal. At the Conference Banquet that night, I was introduced to a woman who was the producer of the TV show called "Is Albert Einstein Right?" and she said that most of the large volume of mail that had been received had concerned me and my radar evidence against Einstein's theories. At the Banquet I met a very interesting business man who had spent 4 years in prison because he had made too much profit! He was a fascinating person to talk to, his name was Mikchail Ivanov, he spoke perfect English, and I learned much about current Russian economic problems, and how he was working to help solve them. At a business meeting the next day, he was the advisor for the Russian Academy, and we made plans for the new journal which will be published in simultaneous Russian and English versions. At present we have plans to hold the III Conference in March 1994 in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Russia, and I am a member of the organizing and editorial committee.